An opposition on the part of [that] government... would ultimately bring
on a separation between its Eastern and Western settlements; towards
which there is not wanting a disposition at this moment in that part of
it beyond the mountains."

Washington's second proposal was the achievement of a new and lasting
conquest of the West by binding it to the seaboard with chains of
commerce. He thus states his point: "No well informed mind need be told
that the flanks and rear of the United territory are possessed by other
powers, and formidable ones too--nor how necessary it is to apply the
cement of interest to bind all parts of it together, by one indissoluble
bond--particularly the middle States with the Country immediately back
of them--for what ties let me ask, should we have upon those people;
and how entirely unconnected should we be with them if the Spaniards
on their right or Great Britain on their left, instead of throwing
stumbling blocks in their way as they do now, should invite their trade
and seek alliances with them?"

Some of the pictures in Washington's vision reveal, in the light
of subsequent events, an almost uncanny prescience. He very plainly
prophesied the international rivalry for the trade of the Great Lakes
zone, embodied today in the Welland and the Erie canals. He declared
the possibility of navigating with oceangoing vessels the tortuous
two-thousand-mile channel of the Ohio and the Mississippi River; and
within sixteen years ships left the Ohio, crossed the Atlantic,
and sailed into the Mediterranean. His description of a possible
insurrection of a western community might well have been written later;
it might almost indeed have made a page of his diary after he became
President of the United States and during the Whiskey Insurrection in
western Pennsylvania. He approved and encouraged Rumsey's mechanical
invention for propelling boats against the stream, showing that he had
a glimpse of what was to follow after Fitch, Rumsey, and Fulton should
have overcome the mighty currents of the Hudson and the Ohio with the
steamboat's paddle wheel. His proposal that Congress should undertake
a survey of western rivers for the purpose of giving people at large
a knowledge of their possible importance as avenues of commerce was a
forecast of the Lewis and Clark expedition as well as of the policy of
the Government today for the improvement of the great inland rivers and
harbors.

"The destinies of our c